The present invention relates to automatic control devices and to methods associated therewith.
The present invention deals particularly with the problem of giving to a home a condition according to which outsiders will tend to assume that the occupants of the home are in fact at home, even though the occupants may actually be away.
As is well known, burglars are prone to burglarize homes which are unoccupied. Thus, when the occupants of a given home go away on vacation, for example, it is customary to attempt to leave the unoccupied home in a condition according to which outsiders will tend to assume that the occupants of the home have not left. Thus, for this purpose it is known to connect timeclocks to lamps and radios for automatically turning them on during the evening and night hours while automatically turning them off at other times of day, so that in this way an attempt is made to give to an unoccupied home the appearance that it is in fact occupied. In this way attempts are made to deter burglarizing of an unoccupied home.
However, experience has shown that measures of this latter type are not always sufficient. Skilled and experienced burglars will normally keep a home, which may be an apartment or a private dwelling, under vigilance for a number of days in order to determine if the occupants of the home are in fact present. While the automatic turning on of lamps and radios during the evening and night hours will tend to indicate that in fact the occupants of a given home are present, there are other signs which will inform burglars that in fact the occupants of the home are not present.
One of the characteristics of a home which is watched by burglars is the condition of the window shades. Thus, even though a lamp may be turned on and off and even though sounds are heard from a radio, a skilled, experienced burglars will note that the window shades remain unchanged even though it is normal for the occupant of the home to close the shade at night and open it during the day. Thus, these conditions of the window shades of a home will accurately indicate to a burglar whether or not the occupants of the home are present or absent, even though lamps may go on and off and radios may be turned on and off.
Thus, at the present time the fact that the window shades of a home remain in an unchanged position over a long interval gives away the fact that the home very likely is unoccupied and thus is a good prospect for a burglary attempt.